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Tales From the Call Center

Today’s post is a guest post from the CEO of a Seattle startup in the business of improving the customer service call centers of their customers. Since customer service is critical to virtually every startup, particularly those in e-commerce, I thought this would be a topic of interest.

An inside glimpse of the intense, sometimes humorous customer service front lines

At HyperQuality, we monitor call center quality for an array of Fortune 1000 companies. What we constantly tell our clients is: call centers cannot be a “set it and forget it” customer service cure. Important metrics from customer interactions should be monitored and analyzed on an ongoing basis, and taken into account by the C-Suite when making strategic business decisions. The voice of the customer should never be underrated because it is this same voice that will influence hundreds of other customers. The upshot? This is your current and future revenue talking to you.

With this in mind, we’ve compiled unconcealed and somewhat amusing highlights from the customer service front lines, as a simple reminder of the human nature involved with CRM, and the unique and difficult nature of the process. Now, for your learning and amusement:

Tales from the Call Center

Routinely, after a customer is notified that the call may be recorded for quality purposes, but before the agent arrives on the line, we receive an insightful glimpse into:

Multitasking: A substantial number of customers use this time for a bio break; usually a toilet can be heard flushing around the time the agent answers the call.
Psyching up: Prior to the agent joining the call, many customers rehearse their arguments, and audibly elevate their blood pressures, in preparation for unloading their frustrations with a company’s products, services or policies.
Improvising: Some customers choose to use this time to sing to themselves, often improvised songs involving the name of the company with which they are about to engage.

And once the call begins, all manner of dialog and diatribe have been observed between company and customer:

Escalations: Beyond the normal request for a supervisor, frequent requests for the president of the company are made. More recently, statements of intent to take the issue to Barack Obama have been heard.

Scenes from beyond: A customer shared with a representative that he had recently died for several minutes, and during his time in “the great beyond” he had a chance to meet with Albert Einstein. It remains unclear how this impacted the customer service experience, but both agent and customer remained serious and focused throughout the dialog.

Anger mismanagement: In a recent tech support call, a customer was really, really upset. She was yelling and at one point said “I hope those people are listening in!” The agent said “Yes, ma’am, the call may be monitored.” The customer then replied “Good, I hope they hear this,” and then she proceeded to growl loudly into the phone. She concluded “THAT is how mad I am.”

Dating services: In this digitally-enabled world of anonymity a number of calls turn into attempts at romantic encounters. Frequent offers to meet up, to talk offline and to take exotic trips together have become somewhat routine in the interactions between service representative and customer. This is despite the clear statement at the beginning of the conversation that the calls are recorded for quality purposes and also that much of a customer’s information is known to the agent by the conclusion of the call.

Sure, it’s good for a bit of humor. But what are the lessons behind these anecdotes? At first glance, not every customer service call can be easily categorized into a specific business learning takeaway. However, be mindful not to discount the high value that customer interactions should have within a business. Overly emotional or eccentric consumers’ opinions cannot be overlooked simply because of behavior with a call agent. It’s crucial to remember your customers are people, not just numbers. And regardless of their manner of expression with your call center employees, at the end of the day they are the real people growing and supporting your business.

Although this business intelligence comes in all shapes and sizes (some humorous, some not) it is essential that you have a team or vendor in place to separate the wheat from the chaff. Take time to evaluate your call center quality, get down in “the trenches” to learn some of the details of these one-on-one interactions, have systems in place to analyze your customer feedback. The insights you gain may surprise you.

By Chris Coles, President and CEO of HyperQuality www.hyperquality.com